I'm new to Debian, having mostly used SuSE before, but wanted to try it in the hope that the rolling updates would give me updated software more quickly and without regular system installations.

My first task is to get NFS server running and I'm using the online tutorials for installing NFS on Debian, but no matter what software I try to install apt-get keeps telling me that packages are not available.

apt-get install nfs-kernel-server nfs-common portmap
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package nfs-common is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

to update the information APT has about packages to make it work. As we get fresh packages basically every day (or even every 6 hours) you need to run this from time to time before installing something new, otherwise APT doesn't know where the cool new stuff is…
(I guess there was something similar required for the whatever packagemanager the others used)

But let me recommend to you to do your first dist-upgrade as described in the manual before installing something else. You will learn a lot in the process which should answer most questions and if not feel free to ask.

_________________MfG. DonKult
"I never make stupid mistakes. Only very, very clever ones." ~ The Doctor

basil_brush

Post subject:Posted: 27.01.2011, 22:37

Joined: 2011-01-27
Posts: 3

Status: Offline

Thanks for your help. It seems "apt-get update" was the bit of magic I needed.